星火六级晨读英语美文100篇

1、Book and LifeBooks are to mankind what memory is to the individual. They contain the history of our race, the discoveries we have made, the accumulated knowledge and experience of ages; they picture for us the miracles and beauties of nature, help us in our difficulties, comfort us in sorrow and in

2、suffering, change hours of weariness into moments of delight, store our minds with ideas, fill them with good and happy thoughts, and lift us out of and above ourselves. Many of those who have had, as we say, all that this world can give, have yet told us they owed much of their purest happiness to

3、books. Macaulay had wealth and fame, rank and power, and yet he tells us in his biography that he owed the happiest hours of his life to books. He says, “If any one would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces and gardens and fine dinners, and wines and coaches, and beautiful clothe

4、s, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I should not read books, I would not be a king; I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who didnt love reading.” Precious and priceless are the blessings which the books scatter around our daily paths. We walk, in imagi

5、nation, with the noblest spirits, through the most solemn and charming regions. Without stirring from our firesides we may roam to the most remote regions of the earth, or soar into realms when Spensers shapes of unearthly beauty flock to meet us, where Miltons angels peal in our ears the choral hym

6、ns of Paradise. Science, art, literature, philosophyall that man has thought, all that man has done, the experience that has been bought with the sufferings of a hundred generations, all are garnered up for us in the world of books.The Year of WanderingBetween the preparation and the work, the appre

7、nticeship and the actual dealing with a task or an art, there comes, in the experience of many young men, a period of uncertainty and wandering which is often misunderstood and counted as time wasted, when it is, in fact, a period rich in full and free development. It is as natural for ardent and co

8、urageous youth to wish to know what is in life, what it means, and what it holds for its children, as for a child to reach for and search the things that surround and attract it. Behind every real worker in the world is a real man, and a man has a right to know the conditions under which he must liv

9、e, and the choices of knowledge, power, and activity which are offered him. In the education of many men and women, therefore, there comes the year of wandering; the experience of traveling from knowledge to knowledge and from occupation to occupation. The forces which go to the making of a powerful

10、 man can rarely be adjusted and blended without some disturbance of relations and conditions. This disturbance is sometimes injurious, because it affects the moral foundations upon which character rests; and for this reason the significance of the experience in its relation to development ought to b

11、e sympathetically studied. The birth of the imagination and of the passions, the perception of the richness of life, and the consciousness of the possession of the power to master and use that wealth, create a critical moment in the history of youth, a moment richer in possibilities of all kinds tha

12、n comes at any later period. Agitation and ferment of soul are inevitable in that wonderful moment. There are times when agitation is as normal as is self-control at other and less critical times. The year of wandering is not a manifestation of aimlessness, but of aspiration, and that in its ferment

13、 and uncertainty youth is often guided to and finally prepared for its task.The Price of PerfectionGold may depreciate, stocks rise or fall, and business values change so as to leave the market in panic, but every man on the street or in the store knows that one value forever remains permanent, unva

14、rying, and that is character. Every other asset may be swept away and success still achieved if this remains; every other aid may be at its best and failure only await him who lacks the wealth of character. Character is that of which reputation is but the echo, often mistaken and misleading. Charact

15、er is the last, the ultimate, value of life. It is the trend of the whole being towards the best. It is the passion and power that holds one true despite all persuasion. It is the one thing worth having, because upon it all other values depend. This asset comes not to a man by accident. He who is ri

16、ch in character, whose success in many ways is built upon his resources in this way, does not just simply happen to be good, true, and square. There is a price to character; it costs more than any other thing, for it is worth more than all other things. Essentially it never is inherited, but always

17、acquired by processes often slow and toilsome and at great price. If you would be perfect you must pay the price of perfection. Unless the passion of life is this perfection it never will be your possession. Dreams of ideal goodness only waste the hours in which it might have been achieved. No man e

18、ver finds character in his sleep. The education of the heart is a thing even more definite than the education of the head. The school of character has an infinite variety of courses and an unending curriculum. This does not mean that this prize of eternity falls only to those who devote themselves w

19、holly to self-culture, to the salvation of their own souls. The best lives have thought little of themselves, but they have lived for the ends of the soul, to help men to better living, to save them from the things that blight and damn the soul. Like the Leader of men they have found the life unendi

20、ng by laying down their lives, paying the full price, selling all in order that right and truth and honor and purity, love and kindness and justice might remain to man.Three Passions I Have Lived forThree passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the se

21、arch for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasyecstasy so great that

22、 I would often have sacrificed all the rest of my life for a few hours for this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves lonelinessthat terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finall

23、y, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is whatat lastI have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have w

24、ished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine .A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my hear

25、t. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old peoplea hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found

26、it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.The Blue DaysEverybody has blue days. These are miserable days when you feel lousy, grumpy, lonely, and utterly exhausted. Days when you feel small and insignificant, when everything seems just out of reach. You cant rise

27、to the occasion. Just getting started seems impossible. On blue days you can become paranoid that everyone is out to get you. This is not always such a bad thing. You feel frustrated and anxious, which can induce a nail-biting frenzy that can escalate into a triple-chocolate-mud-cake-eating frenzy i

28、n a blink of an eye! On blue days you feel like youre floating in an ocean of sadness. Youre about to burst into tears at any moment and you dont even know why. Ultimately, you feel like youre wandering through life without purpose. Youre not sure how much longer you can hang on, and you feel like s

29、houting, “Will someone please shoot me!” It doesnt take much to bring on a blue day. You might just wake up not feeling or looking your best, find some new wrinkles, put on a little weight, or get a huge pimple on your nose. You could forget your dates name or have an embarrassing photograph publish

30、ed. You might get dumped, divorced, or fired, make a fool of yourself in public, be afflicted with a demeaning nickname, or just have a plain old bad-hair day. Maybe work is a pain in the butt. Youre under major pressure to fill someone elses shoes, your boss is picking on you, and everyone in the o

31、ffice is driving you crazy. You might have a splitting headache, or a slipped dish, bad breath, a toothache, chronic gas, dry lips, or a nasty ingrown toenail. Whatever the reason, youre convinced that someone up there doesnt like you. Oh what to do, what to do?The 50-Percent Theory of LifeI believe

32、 in the 50-percent theory. Half the time things are better than normal; the other half, they are worse. I believe life is a pendulum swing. It takes time and experience to understand what normal is, and that gives me the perspective to deal with the surprises of the future. Lets benchmark the parame

33、ters: Yes, I will die. Ive dealt with the deaths of both parents, a best friend, a beloved boss and cherished pets. Some of these deaths have been violent, before my eyes, or slow and agonizing. Bad stuff, and it belongs at the bottom of the scale. Then there are those high points: romance and marri

34、age to the right person; having a child and doing those Dad things like coaching my sons baseball team, paddling around the creek in the boat while hes swimming with the dogs; discovering his compassion so deep it manifests even in his kindness to snails, his imagination so vivid he builds a spacesh

35、ip from a scattered pile of Legos. But there is a vast meadow of life in the middle, where the bad and the good flip-flop acrobatically. This is what convinces me to believe in the 50-percent theory. One spring I planted corn too early in a bottomland so flood-prone that neighbors laughed. I felt ch

36、agrined at the wasted effort. Summer turned brutalthe worst heat wave and drought in my lifetime. The air-conditioner died, the well went dry, the marriage ended, the job lost, the money gone. I was living lyrics from a country tunemusic I loathed. Only a surging Kansas City Royals team, bound for t

37、heir first World Series, buoyed my spirits. Looking back on that horrible summer, I soon understood that all succeeding good things merely offset the bad. Worse than normal wouldnt last long. I am owed and savor the halcyon times. They reinvigorate me for the next nasty surprise and offer assurance

38、that I can thrive. The 50-percent theory even helps me see hope beyond my Royals recent slump, a field of struggling rookies sown so that some year soon we can reap an October harvest.Searching for a Win-Win SolutionRecently I have had a dilemma Im trying to resolve, a weekend in the near future whe

39、re I have conflicting demands and values, and need to be in two places at the same time. I have agonized over this decision because my intuition is not giving me a clear answer and I havent felt that there was a win-win solution. If I do one thing, Im letting down a bunch of people. If I do the othe

40、r, Im also missing the mark. Either way I feel like a loser, not a winner. This morning I got an e-mail that directly addresses this dilemma: A Thinking Test You are driving along on a wild, stormy night. You pass by a bus stop, and you see three people waiting for the bus:1. An old lady who is sick

41、 and about to die.2. An old friend who once saved your life.3. The perfect man or woman you have been dreaming about.Which one would you choose to pick up, knowing that there could only be one passenger in your car? The candidate who was hired simply answered: I would give the car keys to my old fri

42、end, and let him take the lady to the hospital. I would stay behind and wait for the bus with the woman of my dreams. Sometimes, we gain more if we are able to give up our stubborn thought limitations and think outside the box. If, like me, you are looking at a decision that makes you feel forced to

43、 choose between plan A or plan B, and neither plan by itself seems like the right decision, stretch your mind to consider plans C or D, to a third option that solves the problem in a whole new way. Believe that there is a solution you havent yet thought of, which will enable you to feel good about y

44、our choice, and then search for what it is. You are not always the victim in life; most of the time you are the victor looking at the situation from the wrong view! The view is yours to choose.The Folly of AnxietyHalf the people on our streets look as though life was a sorry business. It is hard to

45、find a happy looking man or woman. Worry is the cause of their woebegone appearance. Worry makes the wrinkles; worry cuts the deep, down-glancing lines on the face; worry is the worst disease of our modern times. Care is contagious; it is hard work being cheerful at a funeral, and it is a good deal

46、harder to keep the frown from your face when you are in the throng of the worry worn ones. Yet, we have no right to be dispensers of gloom; no matter how heavy our loads may seem to be we have no right to throw their burden on others nor even to cast the shadow of them on other hearts. Anxiety is in

47、stability. Fret steals away force. He who dreads tomorrow trembles today. Worry is weakness. The successful men may be always wide-awake, but they never worry. Fret and fear are like fine sand, thrown into lifes delicate mechanism; they cause more than half the friction; they steal half the power. C

48、heer is strength. Nothing is so well done as that which is done heartily, and nothing is so heartily done as that which is done happily. Be happy, is an injunction not impossible of fulfillment. Pleasure may be an accident; but happiness comes in definite ways. It is the casting out of our foolish f

49、ears that we may have room for a few of our common joys. It is the telling our worries to wait until we get through appreciating our blessings. Take a deep breath, raise your chest, lift your eyes from the ground, look up and think how many things you have for which to be grateful, and you will find

50、 a smile growing where one may long have been unknown. Take the right kind of thoughtfor to take no thought would be sinbut take the calm, unanxious thought of your business, your duties, your difficulties, your disappointments and all the things that once have caused you fear, and you will find you

51、rself laughing at most of them.My Perfect HouseMy house is perfect. By great good fortune I have found a housekeeper no less to my mind, a low-voiced, light-footed woman of discreet age, strong and deft enough to render me all the service I require, and not afraid of loneliness. She rises very early

52、. By my breakfast-time there remains little to be done under the roof save dressing of meals. Very rarely do I hear even a clink of crockery; never the closing of a door or window. Oh, blessed silence! My house is perfect. Just large enough to allow the grace of order in domestic circumstance; just

53、that superfluity of inner space, to lack which is to be less than at ones ease. The fabric is sound; the work in wood and plaster tells of a more leisurely and a more honest age than ours. The stairs do not creak under my step; I am attacked by no unkindly draught; I can open or close a window witho

54、ut muscle-ache. As to such trifles as the color and device of wall-paper, I confess my indifference; be the walls only plain, and I am satisfied. The first thing in ones home is comfort; let beauty of detail be added if one has the means, the patience, the eye. To me, this little book-room is beauti

55、ful, and chiefly because it is home. Through the greater part of life I was homeless. Many places have I lived, some which my soul disliked, and some which pleased me well; but never till now with that sense of security which makes a home. At any moment I might have been driven forth by evil acciden

56、t, by disturbing necessity. For all that time did I say within myself: Some day, perchance, I shall have a home; yet the perchance had more and more of emphasis as life went on, and at the moment when fate was secretly smiling on me, I had all but abandoned hope. I have my home at last. This house i

57、s mine on a lease of a score of years. So long I certainly shall not live; but, if I did, even so long should I have the money to pay my rent and buy my food. I am no cosmopolite. Were I to think that I should die away from England, the thought would be dreadful to me. And in England, this is the pl

58、ace of my choice; this is my home.Kindness of StrangersOur son Owen was born just as Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf Coast. Two days later, as Katrina neared landfall, Owen began suffering seizures; hed had a stroke. I didnt follow the catastrophe on the Gulf Coast as closely as I might have,

59、but those weeks taught me some things about catastrophe and about the kindness of strangers. All catastrophes are personal. Some in the Gulf Coast sought survival; some sought to help others. Some prayed; some prayed upon others.At the hospital, we watched our son Owen sleep. Despite the tubes dripp

60、ing and the monitors beeping, he still slept his baby sleep. My wife asked for the pastor; I asked for the doctor. She prayed for him. I held the CAT scan up to the light and searched for answers. No one can know what you will feel or fear in a time of need, but I learned that in this, the most diff